Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, May 19, 2026 and once again it’s Malcom X Day (he was born on this day in 1925, and was assassinated at 39). May 15 was also Malcolm X Day, but today is the biggest one as some cities give people the day off. In fact, according to Wikipedia “As of present, only the cities of Berkeley and Oakland in California observe the holiday, with city offices and schools closed.”
Here’s a 4-minute video made by CBS News, which includes his famous statement about gaining freedom “by any means necessary,” a phrase that figures largely at the end of Spike Lee’s biopic about Malcolm When asked by Mike Wallace if he wasn’t afraid of being attacked, he responds, “Oh yes. . . I am probably a dead man already.” Seven months later, he was.
There’s a good 60 Minutes report on Malcolm and his death here.
It’s also Dinosaur Day and National Devil’s Food Cake Day. Why is the cake named that? Wikipedia says this:
The origin of the name may reference the angel food cake, a light, airy sponge cake, which was popular in the late 19th century as the first recipes for devil’s food cake were being published.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 19 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*As America turns 250 years old, the Trump administration is pushing very hard on a narrative that this is a Christian national founded on Christianity. This was clear from a Christian-themed prayer event held Sunday on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (article archived here).
Sitting, standing, dancing and praising with hands raised toward a blazing sun, attendees appeared riveted as speakers took the stage during “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving.” Many said they were thrilled to see an event that tied the nation and its government so overtly to Christianity.
“We welcome Jesus into this place!” worship leader Andy Frank said at the start of the event, belting from a stage with ivory-colored pillars that evoked the neoclassical architecture of the capital’s federal buildings.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking by video, said civilizations before Christianity saw history as a “wheel to nowhere,” and that “our faith” of Christianity has always been the “soul of our nation.”
Trump, who is not known for quoting the Bible, read a passage from Scripture in which God promises to heal the ancient Israelites if they agree to pray and humble themselves before God.
Until Trump’s second term in office, it had been virtually unheard of in modern times for U.S. government officials to publicly tie the nation to a specific set of religious beliefs. Trump’s cabinet members have changed that norm.
On Sunday, aside from a couple of small groups of protesters outside the event, attendees at the jubilee seemed unfazed by or grateful for the government imprimatur on their faith system.
“It’s about time and sorely needed,” said Richard Nuccitelli, 87, a real estate agent from New Fairfield, Connecticut, who traveled to D.C. with four friends from his Bible study group. The Constitution, he said, doesn’t work without a “moral and Christian population.”
That is complete bullpucky. Does Israel not work because its population is not Christian? Do the Scandinavian countries not work because they are not “Christian” in any meaningful sense, comprising a populace that is largely atheistic? Talking about the Constitution, what is the very First Amendment in it? One that guarantees, among other things, freedom of religion. Many of the founders, like Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and Madison, were either non-Christian deists or atheists. It’s very sad that every atheist, Jew, Hindu, and Muslim are disenfranchised from the new Trump-approved narrative. And I suspect that Trump is really an atheist, too: the only God he believe in is the one he sees in the mirror.
*In a NYT/Siena poll (figures here), Trump appears to have low approval on almost everything, including his overall rating as President (37% approval, 59% disapproval). The article is archived here.
Most voters think President Trump made the wrong decision to go to war with Iran, a New York Times/Siena poll found, leaving the Republican Party on rocky political footing heading into the midterm elections as his approval rating sinks and economic concerns rise.
Majorities of voters said that the war was not worth the costs and held deeply pessimistic views about the economy.
Mr. Trump’s approval rating — a key historical predictor of how a president’s party will fare in an election — has sunk to a second-term low in Times/Siena polls of 37 percent amid the deeply unpopular Middle East conflict.
Nearly two-thirds of voters said that going to war had been the wrong decision, including almost three-quarters of politically crucial independents. Less than a quarter of all voters thought the conflict had been worth the costs.
Republicans broadly approved of Mr. Trump’s job performance and the war. But most other voters showed serious skepticism of his leadership on other top issues, including the economy and the cost of living. Sixty-four percent of all voters disapproved of his handling of the economy, long a strength for him, and majorities expressed negative views of how he was managing the cost of living, immigration and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Independent voters in particular have become unhappier with Mr. Trump. Sixty-nine percent disapproved of his job performance, up from 62 percent in a January Times/Siena poll. Forty-seven percent of independents said his policies had hurt them, up from 41 percent in fall 2025.
Overall, 44 percent of voters said Mr. Trump’s policies had hurt them personally, up from 36 percent last fall.
Here’s an overall (national) view of Trump (from the NYT; credits at bottom):
If you look at the linked page with all the states, you’ll see that 7% of Democrats approve of Trump’s performance compared to 82% of Republicans. For disapproval, the relative figures are 92% and 15%. For independent voters, 26% approve and 62% disapprove: not a hearty endorsement.
The NYT also gives the overall view on the economy over time; the ratings today aren’t much different from those in 2023, when Biden was President.
Overall, given the next item, while Trump might not be re-elected if he ran again, that in fact won’t happen. What Republicans should worry about are the midterms, but see the next piece and remember that whoever runs Congress, Trump still has veto power over new bills.
*It’s usual for a President’s administration to lose seats in both the House and the Senate during the midterm elections, which take place this November. Right now the balance is precarious in the House:
House of Representatives: Republicans 220, Democrats 215
Senate: Republicans 53, Democrats 45, Independents 2 (both caucusing with Democrats).
But redistricting is starting to favor the GOP, especially after the recent Supreme Court decision to prohibit race-based gerrymandering.
apnews.com/…/redistricting-house-congress-gerrymander-voting-rights-f78310aed323bfeec3430f236f7b6e03Republicans have opened up an advantage in a national redistricting battle among states after court rulings that weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for minorities and invalidated a key Democratic redistricting effort.
A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Black-majority congressional district in Louisiana as an illegal racial gerrymander has provided grounds for Republicans in several Southern states to try to eliminate House districts with large minority populations that have elected Democrats.
Meanwhile, a Virginia Supreme Court ruling invalidated a voter-approved congressional map that Democrats had been counting on to deliver as many as four additional U.S. House seats. The court said Democratic lawmakers had violated the state constitution when placing the proposal on the ballot.
Legislative voting districts typically are redrawn based on census data after the start of each decade. But an unusual spate of mid-decade redistricting broke out after President Donald Trump urged Texas Republicans last year to reshape U.S. House districts to give the party an edge in the midterm elections. Democrats in California countered with their own political gerrymandering. More states followed.
And it’s going on in South Carolina right now:
An effort to reshape South Carolina’s congressional districts is getting its first full airing Monday in the state House, as lawmakers launch what could become a lengthy and potentially testy discussion on whether to accede to President Donald Trump’s desires for a U.S. House map that could yield a clean sweep for Republicans.
Tense debates already have played out in Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana as Republicans push aggressively to leverage a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakened Voting Rights Act protections for minority districts. The ruling has opened the way for Republicans to redraw districts with large Black populations that have elected Democrats.
In South Carolina, that means targeting a seat long held by U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, the only Democrat among the state’s seven House representatives.
I asked Grok what the consensus view was about who would constitute the House majority after the midterms, and of course it was undecided:
Expert ratings (Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, etc.) and models generally show:
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Baseline/”solid-to-likely” projections before allocating tossups: Democrats around 207–227 seats; Republicans around 202–217 seats.
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Tossup/competitive seats: Typically 10–20 (highly variable by rater). These will largely decide the majority.
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Consensus-style view (e.g., 270toWin aggregating ratings): Roughly 207 D / 209 R baseline + ~19 competitive.
It looks like the Dems have a slight edge at this point, but it’s by no means certain.
*In a post called “Roaring lion plan revealed” at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal, along with other venues, hint that the fighting between Iran and Israel may be about to resume (Trump has also warned Israel that “the clock is ticking”.
t’s Monday, May 18, and both the Israeli government and the IDF are hinting, through statements and actions, that they are preparing for the renewal of American strikes in Iran. Tehran has just submitted its latest diplomatic proposal: a commitment of highly questionable value to refrain from producing nuclear weapons. Conspicuously absent from the document is any mention of halting uranium enrichment or opening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Diplomacy appears to be faltering, but before the next Lion-themed operation, it is worth assessing the success of the last campaign.
Yesterday, Maj. Gen. (res.) Tamir Hayman, executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies and a former head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, published an article with several previously unknown details about the course of the war. Along with the revelations, Hayman gives an assessment: “Despite tactical achievements, the campaign’s two main centers of gravity—the Iranian regime and the nuclear project—remain without fundamental change.”
According to Hayman, Operation Rising Lion in June 2025 “did not pave the way for a permanent solution, and Iran demonstrated a rapid and dangerous recovery capability.” In the nuclear arena, the Iranians rehabilitated the Fordow nuclear facility and accelerated the construction of “Pickaxe Mountain,” which is (allegedly) immune to airstrikes. In the missile domain, they reached a production rate of about 125 ballistic missiles per month and had accumulated a large stockpile of about 2,500 by the start of Roaring Lion. Tehran also led a rapid rehabilitation of Hezbollah by doubling its budget and renewing supply routes through Syria, despite the fall of the Assad regime.
Hayman notes a significant disconnect between the political and military echelons at the outbreak of the war. Israel’s political ambition was the overthrow of the Iranian regime, whereas the IDF’s stated military objective was limited to the attrition of its capabilities. Despite this gap, the first stage of the campaign—spanning from the initial decapitation strikes against senior leadership to the eventual cancellation of the Kurdish incursion—focused heavily on the political aspiration of regime change. The decisive factor of this phase was meant to be an incursion by Kurdish fighters, designed to inflame interethnic tensions, destabilize the government and pave the way for a new, moderate leadership. This maneuver was also intended to serve as the keystone for a broader series of covert operations with similar objectives.
However, the plan was derailed when the Kurdish operation was canceled, likely due to pressure from Turkish and Arab allies. As Hayman puts it, “Once the covert operations were removed from the equation, the primary mechanism for destabilizing the regime’s stability was eliminated.”
Following the high-level assassinations, the campaign’s second phase pivoted to degrading Iranian capabilities. A central objective here was “the destruction of the nuclear project through an innovative and unique approach”—likely requiring a widespread ground maneuver. However, Iran had anticipated the decapitation strikes and proactively decentralized its military command structure before the war. Field officers were granted preauthorization to launch ballistic missiles and close the Strait of Hormuz without waiting for top-down orders. Furthermore, a governing vacuum was averted when Mojtaba Khamenei was appointed supreme leader at the behest of the IRGC.
This decentralized authority allowed Iran to successfully close the Strait of Hormuz, securing global leverage that altered American priorities and redirected attention toward the energy markets. Meanwhile, the campaign exposed the limitations of airpower; by Hayman’s assessment, most of Iran’s nuclear and missile assets survived by being housed in deep-underground bunkers. Consequently, the ultimate “crown jewel” of the military campaign—the destruction of the nuclear program—was not fully realized before the first ceasefire took effect.
This is all depressing: not just the failures to achieve these objectives, but the sidelining of regime change in Iran, which is necessary to secure the freedom of its people. However, Trump gave Iran yet another extension to come up with a reasonable peace plan.
*Men don’t excel in all strength and endurance sports: an exception is the ultramarathon. And a big one—250 miles long—was just won by a 34-year-old woman named Rachel Entrekin, who beat the women’s course record by seven hours and the men’s record by several hours. This shows that either ultramarathons should be run with bot sexes together, or, if women have an average advantage, with winners in two categories.
Then she pulled away, crushing the course record by seven hours, beating every man and woman in the field and providing another example of how multi-day races have erased gender lines.
Now, at 34, Entrekin’s the king of Cocodona, too, or maybe something more than that.
“One of my pacers has determined that I must be from another planet,” Entrekin said in an interview, still buzzing from her historic win.
Entrekin began running in 2009, as a student at the University of Alabama, before starting a career in physical therapy. She eventually started competing in half marathons, then full ones, before hitting longer ultramarathons in the Southeast and descending into what she called “insanity.” When she moved to Washington state and looked up at the vistas, she found her calling.
“I love running up mountains,” she told the “For the Long Run” podcast in February.
Today, Entrekin is fully sponsored and has won or placed in about 100 ultras, regularly beating men. At Cocodona, that meant finishing in 56 hours, nine minutes and 48 seconds. Kilian Korth, the men’s winner, finished 78 minutes behind her.
Here’s a video of Entrenkin after the race:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is anxious again:
Hili: How not to be afraid when everything scares you?
Andrzej: And what are you afraid of now?
Hili: The headlines in the papers.
In Polish:
Hili: Jak się nie bać, kiedy wszystko przeraża?
Ja: A czego się teraz boisz?
Hili: Tytułów gazet.
*******************
From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices. With EVIDENCE! (I can’t even count the errors in this one.)
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
From The Dodo Pet:
Masih calls out Keir Starmer for celebrating the anniversary of the Islamic Republic, and the UK for failing to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization.
Mr. Prime Ministe Keir Starmer! this is the regime whose anniversary you celebrated.
More than 20 plots. In the UK alone. Europe is no longer a safe place it’s a hunting ground.
What did he do to stop the Islamic republic?
Listen.👇@10DowningStreet pic.twitter.com/gz93OwlWlr— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) May 17, 2026
From Luana; little kids spew religious hatred during last week’s anti-immigration march in London. It’s free speech, but it’s no more palatable than “from the River to the sea,” or “globalize the intifada.”
“Allah, Allah, who the fuck is Allah?” Little British patriots grow up. pic.twitter.com/4eaaLWX3Qn
— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) May 16, 2026
From Barry, and yes, this is a real picture. I think both animals survived.
Photographer Martin Le-May was walking through a London park with his wife, hoping to show her a green woodpecker for the first time, when he snapped this incredible photo: a weasel riding a flying woodpecker.
— ContempraInn 🌹 (@contemprainn.bsky.social) 2026-05-18T09:03:21.846Z
From the Number Ten Cat, with pride:
Everybody wants to be a cat… https://t.co/TFPd4jCPL6
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) May 17, 2026
One from my feed, and it’s adorable (there’s music):
🇹🇷 A stray cat in Turkey shows up every morning to hug the man who fed her.
Not sometimes. Every single day.
His shop is now packed with people who come just to watch.pic.twitter.com/TUVI9NPq7n
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) May 18, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was eleven years old. https://t.co/QjqesYbCGp
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) May 19, 2026
And two from Dr. Cobb. Sound up on this first one!
Trying to explain to your wife how you went out for a beer with your friends on Saturday night and came home on Sunday afternoon.
— Paul Bronks (@slendersherbet.bsky.social) 2026-05-17T18:11:52.901Z
A lovely roadrunner. I once had such an encounter while camping in Death Valley. I fed it lettuce.
RoadrunnerPalooza continues… I had a nice encounter with a juvenile yesterday morning. Note nictitating membrane covering its eye.
— Mike Henry (@onlyveesaz.bsky.social) 2026-05-12T13:34:46.913Z
Hmmm. The “river to the sea” chant is a request for the destruction of Israel, and “globalize the intifada” is about attacking Jews worldwide.
In contrast, the kids’ chant in the video is not against people, it is only against a religion. OK, it’s a bit crude, but the right to be openly and explicitly disrespectful to a religion is one we need to uphold, since plenty of people want to deny us it.
I never said that the speech should be censored; in fact, I say precisely the opposite. It’s still not something I’d want my kids to shout.
Umm… regardless whether it should be chanted/yelled, by kids, I had a Scottie relative who loved singing the alternate version.
Google AI:
The song commonly known as “Who the F**k Is Alice” is an explicit, pub-singalong parody of the 1976 hit ballad “Living Next Door to Alice,” originally performed by the British pop-rock band Smokie
The original was by Smokie.
The “Christian” activism in Washington, D.C. fits a pattern of dialectical political warfare – blending truth with lies to advance a political agenda.
The truth it plays on is the strain of thought named Common Sense Realism (Reid, Beattie, et. al.) , which was active at the time of the Declaration and Constitution. The ontology of the individual human (“man”) was placed in a religious context.
Or something – doesn’t matter.
They of course never say this, because they don’t care about it, or Jefferson’s wall of separation between church and state.
The agitation then conceals the exact nature of “Christian” that is represented. “Christian” is this negated – the meaning has been dialectically flattened. This clears space to forward – likely – Charles “Shampoo Guru” Heywood’s completely synthetic “Christian Nationalism” psychological operation.
This is characteristic of Woke radicalism – here, Woke Right.
Same energy, different direction from Left.
You might think that the Christians who see the flaws in both Islamic states which impose specific interpretations of Islam on dissenting citizens — and the progressive ideology which refuses to debate dissenting citizens — would not want to reach for a faith-based understanding of constitutional democracy. In many cases, you’d be wrong.
“The Woke are acting just like religious people! Woke is another religion!”
If that’s an insult, then a different religion isn’t going to fix anything. People being pig sure that they’re on the side of the angels while demonizing the opposition was supposed to be the problem.
The mixing of government and religion is bad for both.
Let me give an example. I live in Israel, which is a country founded as a refuge for Jews in danger of persecution. that is the foundation of the modern Zionist movement. Of course that movement has roots in the Jewish religion, the yearning for Zion as expressed in prayer etc—but the country was founded Primarily by secular Jews who realized the need for Jews to act.
So what is the danger of including a bit of religion? Because then we have people saying that according to religious law, only Jews who observe X can come here, and not Jews who observe Y. Let’s take the example of the host of this blog, who proclaims that he does not observe Jewish law. Even though according to Jewish religious law, he is as Jewish as Maimonides, certain rabbis would oppose his citizenship. And a Jew whose mother is not Jewish, or one whose parents converted by non-orthodox rabbis, would not be considered a Jew by those same rabbis—and citizenship would be opposed by them.
As it stands, Israeli law opposes this. the reasoning, of course, is that Hitler would have considered all of the above people as Jewish, and sent them to the camps. And so it is our responsibility to accept them in our homeland, and give them the right to live as they choose: the guys who opt for bacon and egg brunch on Fridays no less than the fully orthodox who eat the traditional Sabbath meal on /Friday nights, and the folks who observe both. That is how it is today, and that is how it must remain. Israel was a nation before we became a religion, even if it is now both.
But if these religious parties ever get enough power in the Knesset (parliament), it will not be the case. they have made that clear, and the people who vote for them have many more children than people like myself. And the current government has given them unprecedented power. they are not test a majority, but the demographics don’t lie.
I love my country. But—America be warned!
Separation of church and state is a great idea. Whether one believes in religion or not.
Yes. I’m aware of these complications in Israel regarding who is considered Jewish. It’s a good example of the mess that can result from mixing religion and country. We in the U.S. have been playing footsie with religion for our entire 250 year history. It’s a continuing battle to keep religion out of the government.
According to Israeli law I’m as Jewish as Maimonides (Rambam), but by Jewish law I’m probably more like Spinosa.
😮😲🤯
You may have just changed my life.
I have always known that I had a Jewish immigrant grandparent, and because of this I once looked into the Nuremberg Laws to see if I would have been deemed a Jew by the Nazis. But I had absolutely no idea until just now that this qualifies me under Israel’s Law of Return for automatic Israeli citizenship ‼️
This comes at a time of some big life changes for me, where almost everything is on the table. I’ve long felt that my one international move 40 years ago was more than enough for one lifetime, but now….
The voters across much of the West are restless. Macron (18%) and Merz (19%) would love to see approval ratings as high as Trump’s! Starmer? 27%, but that was last month and he isn’t on a hot streak the last couple of weeks. The leaders of Italy, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, South Africa, Norway, Austria, and the Netherlands also join Trump in the sub-40% range, with most of those below him. Canada and South Korea are notable exceptions.
When I look at the crosstabs, I really wonder what voters want. Does anyone really believe that swapping out presidents will fix the economy or ease the cost of living? Will pushing a Democrat into office improve the nation’s mood on immigration? I don’t even want to think about the Dems running our Israel, Gaza, and Iran policies. (Nor will I help them do it.)
Keep in mind Trump’s long-dismal polling on both the economy and the Iran war. Last week, Trump told a reporter that he wasn’t thinking “even a little bit” about Americans’ financial situation in regard to negotiating with Iran. “The only thing that matters . . . they can’t have a nuclear weapon.” Yes, that was a signal to Iran. But it was also the opposite of political pandering. Despite his many flaws, the man deserves credit for that.
https://intel.morningconsult.com/mc-content/trackers/global-leader-approval
I guess swapping out the president would help a bit since Trump and his cronies excel at extracting wealth from the state through corruption and directly from the people through insider trading.
The next administration might be just as bad, but likely cheaper to endure.
We have a nearly $32 trillion economy. Even if one accepts all the fevered dreams of “Trump crony corruption” reaching into the billions, that’s barely a rounding error. Would you care to explain the macroeconomic mechanisms by which this supposed grift measurably drives cost-of-living, inflation, and the overall economic malaise experienced by a majority of voters—particularly as they were feeling the same during the last administration? Or is this just more of the reflexive “Trump bad” framing that ignores the same structural problems hitting Merz, Macron, Starmer, and the rest of the restless West?
Hmmm . . .”A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” But, hey–what did Dirksen know? That’s peanuts!
Would you care to similarly hold forth on the effects of the U.S. national debt, which is at least $32T, on the U.S. economy?
Wow, how far down does one’s bar need to fall to stop carrying water for Trump? I couldn’t even trip over your bar. How do you like his proposed billion dollar slush fund for his private army of wrongfully prosecuted criminal misfits? Smiles and thumbs up, right? No matter, it’s just a rounding error!!!
And comparing EU leaders’ approval to Trump’s is facile.
You can’t meaningful compare approval ratings in a two-party system with those in an actual democracy. (If any third-word dictator, in an effort to get sanctions lifted or whatever, presented something like the U.S. system as democracy, no-one would take him seriously.)
The United States doesn’t pretend or aspire to be a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. The Founding Fathers were leery about unfettered democracy by demagoguery and deliberately designed anti-democratic parts into the Constitutional machinery. (Whether this was to insulate slavery from abolition or for more noble reasons is of no concern of mine.)
As an enthusiastic proponent of proportional representation as the full flowering of democracy with its rigid requirement for political parties — lots of them — you might want to know that the Republic was launched with the hope that there would be no political parties at all. (The institution of impeachment of the President and other Executive and Judicial officers makes no sense in a partisan environment where it could have become the equivalent of a non-confidence vote in Parliament.) Fortunately or unfortunately, getting elected seems to require political parties and they soon appeared. There is no reason why the United States could not have more than two. Over time, though, two-party systems evolve as the most stable arrangement. It’s just too hard to govern with a voting majority in the Legislature otherwise. Third parties either wither or they grow at the expense of an existing party (as Labour submerged the Liberals in the UK), just as gametes are invariably binary and mutually exclusive in all life forms more advanced than fungi. The U.S. just got to that stable state sooner than Europe did.
So in the end it matters not the slightest that you and Europe and the United Nations presumably, since you refer to sanctions, sneer at the American system as undemocratic. That the people can vote out the government and the military doesn’t run it are surely all that matters.
What really makes President Trump’s approval rating meaningless is that unlike a Parliamentarian Prime Minister, his government doesn’t risk falling if the legislature, worried about losing their seats in an election, withdraws confidence or forces him to resign as party leader. Mr. Trump’s immunity against this concern is not the two-party system or first-past-the-post but rather the Separation of Powers where the popularly elected Chief Executive is not beholden to the Legislature at all, unless it screws up its courage to impeach him. And of course Donald Trump is not facing re-election, which must be a huge weight off his shoulders!
Multiple parties are not a good idea. It allows small parties with just a few representatives to hold the balance of power, which can enable them tom push an agenda that most of the society does not want. Again, Israel is a good example: the multiparty system is what forced Netanyahu to take right wing extremists into his government. People with criminal backgrounds, who in the past had not been considered fit to serve in government, including by Netanyahu himself.
Re the mangled sign. It seems to me s/he’s a decent immigrant struggling with English as a second (or third, or fourth…) language in the good fight against the antisocial assholes who are enshittifying our society. Someone well-assimilated I’d like to have living on my street. No suicidal empathy there.
“This shows that either ultramarathons should be run with bot sexes together, or, if women have an average advantage, with winners in two categories.”
A study a few years ago showed that men still have an advantage in ultras.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3870311/
I don’t think there is any data showing that women have an average advantage (but please contradict me if that is untrue).
However, in ultra long distance swimming, especially in colder waters, I believe that there is greater evidence that women may hold an average advantage, even if they are not winning all of these races.
https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/why-women-have-beaten-men-in-marathon-swimming/
Of course I saw the widely played video excerpts of the Christian rally in Washington, including Trump’s stilted reading from the (Hebrew) Bible. Yes, it’s an annoyance, but it will soon be forgotten. (I hope.)
Iran: Yesterday I read that a planned restart of the war was postponed at the request of Gulf allies. They want to give diplomacy another chance. I, too, believe in diplomacy. But diplomacy is not merely sitting down at a table and talking to each other over the fruit platter. Diplomacy includes kinetic action to demonstrate that talking is in the enemy’s best interest. I don’t think that table talk will end this war on its own—unless the U.S. gives up.
About the sea gulls that supposedly learned to mew. The old English name for a gull is mew, named for the kind of wailing cry they make, so it is not as if making a mew-noise is a new accomplishment for gulls.
Regarding the DC mall tent revival whoopin’ and hollerin,’ I wonder what portion of the attendees were Catholic and especially Orthodox.
Listening to certain podcasts, I’ve occasionally heard an advertisement from the State of South Carolina bloviating about its puffed-up contribution to the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. One section of the speaker’s script to the effect references “enslaved people” knowing the backwoods, working it to the advantage of the American colonists against the British. I don’t think it too much a stretch to infer from that that a slave ought to enjoy his chains and prefer his enslavement by a South Carolina colonist patriot slave-owner than to side with the British who, IIRC, abolished the slave trade the first decade of the 19th century. No doubt the script was approved by a good Christian. The last word in the ad is a resounding “Huzzah!” Sic semper the state of John C. Calhoun.
Re: Noon in Israel, Amit Segal: ‘However, the plan was derailed when the Kurdish operation was canceled, likely due to pressure from Turkish and Arab allies. As Hayman puts it, “Once the covert operations were removed from the equation, the primary mechanism for destabilizing the regime’s stability was eliminated.”’
Perhaps Segal or Hayman or someone will interview Kurdish leaders to determine whether the Kurds simply didn’t want to get involved. I have gathered, however subjectively, from Christopher Hitchens, a steadfast supporter of the Kurds, that the Kurds have an independent mind of their own.
It’s stuff like this which is why the POTUS will be Republicans for the foreseeable future future: https://x.com/its_The_Dr/status/2056435139341676864?s=20
What we need is someone like Bill Maher vor President (though without his anti-vax “natural immunity” stuff, though I like to think that he could be convinced that he is wrong).